Jordan talks politics in Lima

U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan stopped by The Lima News to discuss recent topics.

Sam Shriver | The Lima News

LIMA — U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan says the Freedom Caucus will not blindly support a tax plan from fellow Republicans, noting they have been slow in providing details.

“Congress has been in session nine months. We’ve been told ‘don’t introduce your tax plan, Freedom Caucus, wait for ours but we’re not going to show it to you until you pass a budget’ … We’re not going for it until we see some more detail and some … specific framework on what we’re really going to do on tax reform, then we’ll be willing to vote for a budget to move there,” Jordan said Thursday in a visit to The Lima News.

“We’re just not interested in being surprised again and not having a bill that may not in fact actually cut taxes for middle class families,” the 4th District Republican added.

Jordan touched on several subjects.

Regarding hurricane relief, Jordan said Congress will need to act in the next few months on additional funding.

“They’re still doing the assessment now from FEMA. Homeland Security and the Small Business Administration all those agencies are involved and obviously local governments, state governments doing the assessment. Everyone understands it’s going to be more than $15 billion. December 8 is the deadline when the short-term government funding bill runs out, so December 8 will be when those decisions will have to be made, what additional dollars may go out,” he said.

Jordan recently met with President Donald Trump.

“We had a good meeting, it’s been several weeks back now with the president on welfare reform. He understands we need to help people who are in a tough situation, but he also understands we need to incentivize work. We had a great conversation. He was very supportive of the bill we introduced on the House side. We spent a lot of time on why welfare reform was important,” he said.

“No one is talking about deportation. What the president did, I thought made a lot of sense. I hope and believe it will be a catalyst to actually doing an overhaul of our immigration system which is what the American people want and they want us to start with the most important thing which is the centerpiece of the campaign last fall and that is building a border security wall to secure our southern border,” he said.

U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan stopped by The Lima News to discuss recent topics.